“Lip Service.” It’s a fairly common idiom in our language that means people who promise something, and then they never seem to deliver. We have all experienced it, and perhaps we are even guilty of it. Generally speaking, lip service is paid to minor things, such as “I’ll be sure to pop into your finger-painting exhibition at the National Gallery when I’m in town.”
However, in the case of Katie Brennan, lip service is a much more important issue, especially in the age of #MeToo and given that she is active in a field where sexual harassment is a major rallying point. What happens when no one cares about ethics?
No one believes her
Katie Brennan is the current chief of staff at the New Jersey Housing Authority. She takes her job seriously. What she can’t take seriously is how no one in state government has taken her seriously.
Prior to her current job she volunteered for the state’s housing agency and a former volunteer for Phil Murphy’s gubernatorial campaign.
Ms. Brennan claims she was sexually assaulted in April 2017, when fellow a campaign staffer allegedly 
assaulted her. She called the police and the case was investigated over a period of several months. The prosecutor’s office was unable to find grounds to proceed and as a result, they never filed charges against the alleged attacker. Their rationale was that they didn’t feel, given the sketchy findings that he would receive a conviction in a court of law.
However, Ms. Brennan was not satisfied. She contacted state police officials and those high up in Governor Murphy’s administration (after all, she worked for him). They did not respond to her sexual assault claims.
Apparently, her attacker, obviously hiding behind legal counsel, offered Brennan a $15,000 settlement if she would sign a non-disclosure agreement. This, to my mind, is tantamount to an admission of guilt or at least an attempt to tell her to keep quiet and go away.
She was so outraged at the hush money, she directly emailed Governor Murphy and his wife Tammy asking to speak with them on a highly confidential sensitive matter. The email was sent in June 2018, then more than a year after the initial accusation of sexual assault.
True, her letter to the governor didn’t spell out the assault directly, but the governor did respond rather quickly that he was trying to carve out some time for a meeting. The governor seemed to have been hardly surprised by her request for a meeting, for he responded: “Hang in, we are on it.”
Obviously, the governor’s office must have done some research into the matter before contacting her. Though Ms. Brennan was pleased to have the governor’s office respond, the meeting that seemed almost imminent, never happened.
Nothing changed
Despite the investigation (and lack of prosecution), the report to the state police investigators, the $15,000 hush money and even the governor’s response, the man who allegedly attacked her, Albert J. Alvarez, was still working for the state!
He was, incredulously still the chief of staff at the New Jersey Schools Development Authority. He was involved with the school system!
It was not until October 2, 2018, when the Wall Street Journal started an investigation that Alvarez resigned his position. Said Ms. Brennan “At each turn, I’ve just felt so disappointed. I tried everything. And none of it worked. If I can’t get any justice, I just don’t seriously know who can.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Alvarez’s attorney, claims that Mr. Alvarez “absolutely, positively denies these allegations of sexual assault.”
Both Alvarez and the attorney have refused any further comment. Naturally, politicians on both sides of the aisle are trying to make political hay. The Republicans want an investigation as to just how Alvarez was hired. The Democrats, not to be outdone (they are the majority party) said they were disturbed by the charges leveled by Ms. Brennan.
The police said all the right things, but in the final analysis, Ms. Brennan’s alleged abuse is largely brushed aside, the alleged perpetrator has gone onto other things, and the governor’s office seems to have dissociated themselves from the charges. What happens when no one cares about ethics?
No one, it seems, cares about doing the ethical thing, which would be to re-open the case. Across the country, women and men have stepped forward to try and prosecute sexual assault. We applaud their courage. Yet, the cases are rarely “won.” Perhaps it is so rare to achieve success in prosecution because lip service seems more important than action. The system it seems is much more concerned with appearance than doing what is right.
